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The [classical] liberal, of course, does not deny that there are some superior people -- he is not an egalitarian -- but he denies that anyone has authority to decide who these superior people are.

Friedrich August von Hayek

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Friedrich August von Hayek
Age: 92 †
Born: 1899
Born: May 8
Died: 1992
Died: March 23
Economist
Historian
Philosopher
Political Scientist
University Teacher
Vienna
Austria
Friedrich August von Hayek
Friedrich von Hayek
Friedrich A. von Hayek
Friedrich A. Von Hayek
F. A. von Hayek
Friedrich August Von Hayek
Hayek
F. A. Hayek
Courses
Individualism
Course
Classical
Anyone
Superior
Doe
Superiors
People
Liberal
Decide
Deny
Egalitarian
Authority
Denies

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Freedom can be preserved only if it is treated as a supreme principle which must not be sacrificed for particular advantages.
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Perhaps even more than elsewhere current notions of what is desirable and practicable are here still of a kind which may well produce the opposite of what they promise.
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Without a theory the facts are silent.
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Conservatism is only as good as what it conserves.
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Personally I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism.
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Planning leads to dictatorship because dictatorship is the most effective instrument of coercion and the enforcement of ideals and, as such, essential if central planning on a large scale is to be possible.
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Through the inevitable mismanagement of resources and goods at the disposal of the state, all forms of collectivism lead eventually to tyranny.
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The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.
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And it's a necessity [for journalists] to pretend to be competent on every subject, some of which they really do not understand. They are under that necessity, I regret I'm sorry for them. But to pretend to understand all the things you write about, and habitually to write about things you do not understand, is a very corrupting thing.
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Our moral traditions developed concurrently with our reason, not as its product.
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To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm.
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The state itself becomes more and more identified with the interests of those who run things than with the interests of the people in general.
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The argument for liberty is not an argument against organization, which is one of the most powerful tools human reason can employ, but an argument against all exclusive, privileged, monopolistic organization, against the use of coercion to prevent others from doing better.
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Hayek was making us think of the productive process as a process in time, inputs coming before outputs.
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If we can reduce the risk of friction likely to lead to war, this is probably all we can reasonably hope to achieve.
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Nothing is more securely lodged than the ignorance of the experts.
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If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion.
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Socialism can only be put into practice only by methods which most socialists disapprove.
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The younger generation of today has grown up in a world in which in school and press the spirit of commercial enterprise has been represented as disreputable and the making of profit as immoral, where to employ a hundred people is represented as exploitation but to command the same number as honorable.
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